betterplace labhttps://www.betterplace-lab.org
digital für sozialTue, 18 Dec 2018 11:30:59 +0000de-DEhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.8https://www.betterplace-lab.org/wp-content/uploads/cropped-bplab_Logo_freigestellt-32x32.pngbetterplace labhttps://www.betterplace-lab.org
3232Rethinking Blockchain: How to design the future of the commonshttps://www.betterplace-lab.org/de/rethinking-blockchain-how-to-design-the-future-of-the-commons/
Thu, 06 Dec 2018 08:59:08 +0000http://www.betterplace-lab.org/?p=3722Weiterlesen]]>“Are you still a believer?” – That’s a question I get commonly asked nowadays when meeting people in the blockchain space. The massive crash of the entire cryptomarket fuels fear, not only to the general retail investor but also within the blockchain space itself. Be it developers, token engineers or all the others involved in one of the many blockchain projects out there. Most of us are raising the same question: Are we still heading into the right direction? What has happened and what can we learn to progress?

From inflated expectations back to reality

To get a clearer picture of the current state of things it is beneficial looking at them retrospectively. Doing this for 2017, we can tell that this has been the year in which blockchain technology has made its first steps towards mainstream. Especially Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), an innovative way of early stage venture funding, have attracted a lot of media attention as they played a key role within the speculative hype reaching its peak in December 2017.

Blockchain as a topic has been covered in the news and in an unfolding number of talks, seminars and workshops. Also a huge number of projects and entrepreneurs jumped on the bandwagon, sometimes taking profits just by marketing their ventures as being blockchain related rather than really working on a genuine blockchain protocol.

Many projects and the ecosystem in its entirety have received tremendous amounts of money from investors, who in turn expected world-changing protocols and high returns on their investments. These expectations where clearly overblown. At least on a short-term basis. But it has also been a time of necessary experimentation and trial-and-error. Now we realize that most of what has been announced and funded through ICOs makes little to no sense to run on a blockchain.

In combination with a market psychology driven by the sentiments of the masses, the situation has turned upside down by now. The fear of capital loss has led to a dramatic decrease in value of crypto assets and people tell you Bitcoin is dead (and mean blockchain in general). For those that are new to the space – Bitcoin has been declared dead for many times throughout the years. So where are we now?

Bye, bye easy money – welcome social impact

Here is the good thing – while those looking for a quick buck are leaving the space as gold-rush mood is over, there is a lot of real work done across the entire ecosystem. Projects and ventures continue to create and fine-tune their products. Even more exciting is that intellectuals from a variety fields are starting to get seriously interested in the technology.

I experienced that for instance at Revision, a conference recently held in Berlin on blockchain and social change. Philosophers, sociologists and economists met with computer scientists to collectively explore the transition to a more “purpose-driven and human-centric future in the digital age”, considering blockchain technology a fundamental piece to facilitate all that. It was great to take part in sophisticated discussions tackling the question on how we can design systems that really make sense, that have societal impact and change the way we collaborate and distribute wealth for the better. But what exactly does that actually mean?

Roundtable at Revision Summit 2018

The potential of blockchain for social good

The potential blockchain technology holds for social impact is manifold. Initiatives directed towards blockchain for good range from innovative solutions for healthcare, peer-to-peer electricity networks to transparent global supply chains [PDF]. Such application-oriented approaches try to transform specific industries by adding an extra layer of security and transparency to specific procedures. This is great and can make the world more equitable in many ways. The revolutionary potential of blockchains though, lies in providing us with a tool to coordinate effort to achieve a collective goal. Peer-to-peer production based on a dedicated token economy allows for rewarding and compensating contributors according to the work they do for the community. Instead of a central authority controlling and owning the network, we will have open and decentralized infrastructures in no one’s possession, where everyone can contribute and benefit from.

While open software and peer-to-peer production isn’t exactly something new, the game changer is the incentive layer (= tokens) we can now add to it. If designed and set up correctly it guarantees a fair distribution of the value created within the network by basing it on individual merits and commitment rather than formal and informal, social and cultural hierarchies. Such systems, designed as digital cooperatives, give back decision power to the people using them. We can be consumers, owners and creators at the same time.

Integrate as many perspectives as possible

But there are still some steps to take before this will become a reality. And I am not talking about the technical issues like scalability, interoperability or poor user experience that currently prevent further adoption of blockchain technology.

In order to build elaborate architectures for our global and digital future, it is now time to reimagine, rethink and learn from the design flaws that are inherent to most systems that were conceptualized and developed during the last two years. When the hype was omnipresent, it seems, everyone just hurried up in order to not lose the train of easy funding.

But now we should take the time and thoroughly discuss where we are and were we want to go. Therefore we need to include as many disciplinary perspectives as possible and start drafting concepts and system designs that acknowledge the complexity of human motivations and commitments (there is no homo oeconomicus!). It is about taking into account the observable patterns of social and economic systems instead of blindly following simplistic theoretic assumptions of the human nature.

Switch mindsets – from business to commons

Another aspect still receiving less attention in the blockchain space than in other technological environments, is that we need to reflect our biases when crafting technological infrastructure. It is necesary to bring in more diversity to the early stages of concept design in order to not widen the gap between genders or North and South. Tech is not neutral. It always reflects its creator’s attitude, mindset and social standing. This is not only true in the development process of AI but also for Blockchains. What does that all mean?

It means that we need to open up the discussion and collectively try to understand what it means to actively design our digital commons. Relying on a Business Model Canvas will not be enough for that task. It lacks to account for consumers being the creators and owners of their own product, for communities collectively steering their shared vision and deciding on the next steps to take. We need new reference points to understand these new constellations. Can we establish best practice patterns for these challenges? A Commons Model Canvas?*

Identity, Economics and Governance

One thing is for sure – exciting times lie ahead! We see the potential of blockchain for good closely tied to three concepts that need to be further developed. These are self-sovereign digital identity, token economics and distributed governance. Why those three?

Self-sovereign identity as it fundamentally impacts the way we manage our data and may allow us to recapture a self-determined digital life. We need free ourselves from being constantly tracked and nudged into corporate interests and build up a democratic digital infrastructure that allows everyone to act in his or her own best interests.

Token economics as they form a basis for any ecosystem that aims to be built upon a network of individuals that want to transfer economic value between each other and incentivize behavior that adds to their shared goal.

Distributed governance as flourishing of an ecosystem depends on dedicated participation and identification of the many. We need to give them the ability to shape the future of what they are committing themselves to.

At betterplace lab we do research where innovation and the common good meet and strive for a digitization that benefits humanity. Distributed governance in particular is a field to which we as betterplace lab feel naturally linked as it overlaps in many ways with our internal governance structures.

Around four years ago we have collectively decided to change our organizational framework to a holacracy model. Instead of having a boss, we rely on competence-based hierarchies, self-management and peer-based structures to organize ourselves and get great things done.

We are always eager to connect to others entering unknown territory, share experiences and think about to what the world of tomorrow might look like. We are especially excited to explore and contribute to the future of blockchain technology and will happily share our findings.

But in the meantime – why not have a look at some of the great projects that inspired this blogpost? For example at Jolocom or Taqanu for identity solutions or Colony, DaoStack and Rchain for cutting-edge concepts in distributed governance and platform cooperatives.

* I would like to thank Andrea Bauer for a stimulating discussion on the topic and kicking off that idea.

]]>The future of the open movement for Digital Social Innovationshttps://www.betterplace-lab.org/de/the-future-of-the-open-movement-for-digital-social-innovations/
Fri, 23 Nov 2018 13:35:11 +0000http://www.betterplace-lab.org/?p=3691Weiterlesen]]>Climate change, social division, fallout from the digital revolution – we are facing considerable challenges that can only be tackled with new and innovative solutions. The open movement seeks to work towards solutions of many of the world’s most pressing problems in a spirit of transparency, collaboration, re-use and free access. The internet itself is perhaps the best example of how technology and society can benefit from continuous innovation and collaboration across borders and sectors. In theory, its universal, open and distributed infrastructure should allow everyone to participate and thereby improving eachothers’ lives and society.

In our trend analysis, produced as part of the DSI4EU project, we demonstrate how digital social innovations exhibit many overlaps and synergies with the open movement. For them, open represents one of the main drivers for participation and collaboration and innovative potential. Philosophically, both uses of digital technology are underpinned by advancing the common good above profit or other narrower interests. It readily follows from both positions that the more people who have access, the better. In practice there is strong evidence that opening up information and the innovation process to decentralised and “crowdsourced” development can lead to better results more quickly, since more people are able to contribute their expertise, and greater experimentation is possible.

DSI shows considerable potential to drive social transformation – by supporting citizens to hold their governments to account (such as decidim.org), by demonstrating the possibilities of open government data (such as abgeordnetenwatch.de, Madame Mayor I have an idea ), by developing and using open source technologies for social impact (such as Ushahidi), by facilitating collaboration (such as OpenStreetMap or Zooniverse) and by combining human intelligence with machine learning (such as Fold.it, MicroMappers or AIME). In our trend analysis, we give a broad survey of the landscape. Analysing the usage of different terms over time, we find that open knowledge and open source are the terms within the open movement with the highest traction and understand the key actors and trends in the field, along with the most promising DSI connected with it.

Throughout our analysis, it is clear that a thriving open movement is likely to have positive spillover effects on DSI. Unfortunately however, the principles of the former are increasingly coming under threat, with the rise of web censorship and internet shutdowns, government blocks on mobile apps and websites and monopolisation of data and Internet infrastructure by a handful of proprietary tech firms which, while free to use, are far from open. The dominance of big tech is like no type of monopoly ever seen before. And the open movement doesn’t seem to be able to counteract this. As a movement, composed of various sub-groups and factions, each with their own missions and values, it lacks coherence. This undermines the movement’s ability to explain to the broader population what it stands for, to advocate for policy change, and generally to gain traction in broader society beyond a committed group of experts.

A threat to the open movement means a threat to the innovative character of DSI which is why we call for effort, coordination and political and public will to fight for an open internet. We need new rules for the new digital world. We need to openly discuss the dangers of a closed digital world built on proprietary information and software and platform lock-in strategies. We need an open digital ecosystem, providing the necessary resources for DSI to exist alongside commercial services. Because only then we will likely to have the possibilities to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges in fields including education, climate change, health, and disaster relief.

DSI4EU aims to support the growth and scale of digital social innovation (DSI), tech for good and civic tech in Europe through a programme of policy, research and practical support. Find out more at digitalsocial.eu/about-the-project. DSI4EU, formally known as DSISCALE, is supported by the European Union and funded under the Horizon 2020 Programme, grant agreement no 780473.

As part of the Make-IT Alliance, an Initiative of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) together with GIZ, the betterplace lab, a think tank based in Berlin, is conducting a scouting mission in 6 African countries (Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Tunisia) focusing on digital innovations and exciting business models.

We believe that digital entrepreneurship is a driver of digital change in Africa. Tech entrepreneurs have the potential to modernise the economies and societies of their countries, discover innovative solutions to development challenges, and create new perspectives.

Who are we looking for?

We are specifically looking to meet and talk with entrepreneurs with the following background:

● Female Entrepreneurs – Women who have successfully founded an enterprise or technology start-up. We would like to tell their story of success and challenges in becoming a leader in their field
or

● So-called Hidden Digital Champions – The founders of innovative start-ups or digital SMEs which have built up their companies far away from classical tech incubators or hubs (and who might maintain international business relations)

We are soon embarking on our trend-scouting mission – help us to find entrepreneurs in Africa that make a difference! Are you one of those we should meet and talk to? Do you know someone we cannot miss? Please get in touch with us!

]]>Leading from the Edge of the Unknownhttps://www.betterplace-lab.org/de/leading-from-the-edge-of-the-unknown/
Mon, 03 Sep 2018 12:39:16 +0000http://www.betterplace-lab.org/?p=3588Weiterlesen]]>

Tomas Björkman is an entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist who believes that we need a more conscious society to tackle our current challenges. Joana Breidenbach met him at his CoCreation Loft in Berlin to talk to him about what this means for leadership.

We are living in exciting yet challenging times. With our economic and political systems in crisis, we are faced with the need of an institutional renewal, which takes better care of the health of the planet and its citizens. In many places, we see promising signs for the necessary systems change, such as the rise of the regenerative economy and new deliberative democratic processes.

Yet not only do these approaches seem to be largely isolated and unaware of the larger dynamics of the transformation they are part of. What is also lacking is a coherent new vision of leadership.

Too many CEOs, politicians, and civic leaders are stuck in a command and control style, relying on experts for advice. This works well in complicated but predictable situations.

With increasing complexity, situations change. Systems theory tells us that in fluid, strongly interconnected environments, no one right answer can be found. Instead, leaders need to patiently allow the path forward to reveal itself. In complex systems, with non-linear and exponential dynamics, there are no straightforward solutions, only answers that are emerging.

Swedish entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist Tomas Björkman has dedicated the last ten years to finding and supporting initiatives that support new leadership styles and competencies.

One of them is his retreat center on the island of Ekskäret in the Stockholm archipelago, used for both youth camps and courses on personal development. Tomas also co-founded Perspectiva, a London-based think tank focused on inspiring leaders to examine “real world problems with a deeper appreciation of the influence of our inner worlds.”

Tomas Björkman founded a retreat center on the island of Ekskäret in the Stockholm archipelago, Sweden. Ekskäret Foundation

A more conscious society

I had been on a retreat on Ekskäret Island myself and met Tomas again later in Berlin for an interview. My first question to him was how all these initiatives are connected.

“The tagline of your activities is to ‘facilitate the co-creation of a more conscious society.’ What does that actually mean?”

Tomas has something of a patient, erudite teacher about him. He begins his answer by referring to the Enlightenment, during which humans acquired a scientific outlook. According to Tomas, it was hugely beneficial, and as regards wealth, health, and life expectancy, today “we are in many ways living the dream of our grandparents.”

But with our global and digitized age, the rationalist worldview has come to an end. Worse, its assumption of homo economicus, of humans as unchanging rational actors, is in many ways directly responsible for the big problems we are facing – from environmental destruction to global inequality and poor mental health.

Joana Breidenbach met… Marc Beckmann/Ostkreuz

…Tomas Björkman for an interview.Marc Beckmann/Ostkreuz

Humans are obviously not wholly rational beings, responsibly looking after themselves and their planet.

Instead, current neuroscience, adult developmental psychology, and behavioral economics give us a much more complex and fluid image of who we are.

„We need to enable humans to grow personally, to become more aware of themselves and their surroundings.“ – Tomas Björkman

Not only is our mind an open system, developing throughout our lifetime, but it is also deeply embodied – we “know” with our gut, our spinal cord, and the chemicals in our bloodstream. Additionally, we are embedded within the meaning systems of culture.

This much more complex notion of human nature and consciousness forms the launching pad for Tomas Björkman’s work. In order to build a more equitable society looking after our planetary home, we need to enable humans to grow personally, to become more aware of themselves and their surroundings.

Growing up psychologically

“During one of the youth camps on Ekskäret Island, I overheard a conversation between a young girl and a camp leader,” Tomas tells me. “She talked about how stressed out she was by all the things she wanted to spend time on – social media, sports, friends, etc. But some probing questions by the youth leader changed her perspective fundamentally.

She said: ‘Oh, now I see! I don’t have to do all the things I want to do!’ In this moment, she became more conscious – before, her will ‘had’ her; afterwards, she owned her will.”

The island of Ekskäret is located in the Stockholm archipelago, Sweden. Ekskäret Foundation

In this life-long process of becoming more aware of – and thus transcending – previously unconscious habits and beliefs, we increase our freedom and become authentic authors of our own life in a much deeper sense.

Already during his career in investment banking, Tomas saw that “the inner quality” of managers – capacities such as self-reflection and multiperspectivity – were key factors for success. Having made a lot of money and realizing that we are in the midst of a great societal transition, Tomas turned to philanthropy.

For the past decade, he has sought to create spaces in which such personal and cultural development can be deliberated and prototyped; spaces where CEOs and founders as well as politicians and civil society leaders can develop the inner skills needed to navigate in complex, unpredictable environments.

Using this clear vision as a compass, the serial entrepreneur lets himself be guided by serendipity.

“The CoCreation Loft is a good example,” he tells me, pointing to the well-designed rooftop apartment turned co-working space.

Tomas Björkman is standing on the rooftop terrace of the CoCreation Loft. Marc Beckmann/Ostkreuz

The CoCreation Loft is a co-working space in Berlin. Marc Beckmann/Ostkreuz

Marc Beckmann/Ostkreuz

“Two years ago, in Esalen (a retreat center on the California coast), I met a young German guy. Steffen Stäuber had just sold his communication company and was on a world trip, figuring out what to do next. We only met for 15 minutes before he had to leave, but I told him to call me after his return to Berlin and we would create a space together.”

A few months later, they founded the CoCreation Loft. It hosts a dozen desks, living areas, and a meditation room for a diverse range of systems changers interested in exploring new ways of making society more conscious.

Steffen and his crew also invite speakers and facilitators to discuss topics such as entrepreneurship, personal growth, art and death (my friend Hanno Burmester and I organized a Death over Dinner there).

The things most important today can’t be measured

For someone who made his fortune with numbers, Tomas surprises me by saying that he does not use performance indicators for his philanthropic activities.

“For KPIs to be effective, you need to be able to measure them. But the things the world most urgently needs today are qualitative and can’t or shouldn’t be measured. Instead, you just know whether a project has a positive impact on society or not.”

One question Tomas is currently pondering is how progressive initiatives can be funded. Many now point to the market. But this can be a trap: He has seen too many social entrepreneurs burnt out and losing focus, trying to squeeze their ideas and products into market.

He even wrote his first book about The Market Myth, exposing market solutions as unsuitable for collective goals such as a healthy societal culture. Instead, politics needs to step in. But with the current crises, the focus of politics is elsewhere.

Before parting, I ask Tomas where he gets his inspiration from. He pauses, as if checking within himself for an answer. “I grew up on a small family farm in Sweden,” he then says, “and it is in nature that I can connect to deeper layers of myself most easily.” Useful too, he continues, is the ability to switch off.

Unfocussing the mind allows for deeper, unconscious processes to surface, and enables one to see new patterns in the complexity of daily life.

This, I concur, is what is needed today. As Tomas said in his recent talk at TEDx Berlin:

“The success of the industrial revolution was based on an acceptance of our limited knowledge of our outer world. It was that acceptance, and our curiosity about our outer world, that made us discover new continents and made us reach for the moon. The revolution of our time is also about acceptance – this time, acceptance of our limited knowledge of our inner world. This acceptance – and the discoveries that will come from that – will be the big step forward for humanity in our century.”

About Tomas Björkman

In the first part of his professional life Tomas Björkman worked in information technology, investment banking, and property development. After many years in business, he is now a social entrepreneur and an author.
He supports a whole range of interesting initiatives. Alter Ego intends to build a transformative political movement. There is Tech Farm, a “purpose-driven real estate venture” that launches co-living and co-working properties in Stockholm and Berlin. Apart from location-based initiatives, Tomas also supports 29k. This non-profit startup is developing digital tools to make the latest findings in psychology about transformational growth available to as broad an audience as possible.

About the Author: Joana Breidenbach

Joana has a PhD in cultural anthropology and is the author of several books on the cultural impact of globalization, migration, and tourism. She is co-founder of betterplace.org, a crowdfunding platform for social projects.

What went wrong? Not long ago, the extraordinary wave of digital projects launched in response to the European “refugee crisis” appeared to herald a new era for DSI: more dynamic, more responsive, more mainstream. But in the past few months, this appearance has faded, giving way to a more sobering picture.

The “turning point” which we were starting to feel in our first blogpost in January has veered into full-blown disillusionment. Several well-known projects in this space have packed up shop, and our research suggests that the majority of the 169 projects we know of have become inactive.

This is the first of three blogs in which we ask, honestly and unflinchingly: what happened with the “refugee tech” phenomenon? What are the serious missteps and how can we learn from them? Where do we go from here?

To very briefly recap, beginning at the beginning: Even at the time it was clear – and with hindsight even more so – that the burst of projects launched in late-2015 and early-2016 was unique in the history of digital social innovation (DSI). In Germany alone, during the peak of this “explosion phase”, there were four new projects launching each week! It wasn’t just the sheer volume of activity that was striking. There was considerable diversity in terms of who was starting these projects. The arresting images in the media of hundreds of thousands of refugees in need spurred many people into action who had no previous engagement either with DSI nor with issues around asylum or migration. Moreover, from the early days there were spontaneous impulses towards self-organisation: Slack channels and Facebook groups where this community started exchanging ideas, and several open databases (including our own) to keep track of the growing number of projects.

These are all themes I will return to in what follows, as we turn to look at the things that didn’t work so well.

But first, a note: in this blog I reference specific projects and challenges, including some of our own. In singling out projects, I intend no criticism of the people who worked so hard to build them. I have utmost respect and admiration for their vision and hard work. But though it might be uncomfortable, what is most important is that we honestly attempt understand what happened, and that as a community we learn from that. I’ll return to these points in the third article in this series, which points to some reasons to be hopeful.)

Fail #1: Building too many things

One challenge that was visible almost immediately was widespread duplication. There may have been over a hundred new projects, but the number of new ideas was much smaller. In other words, different people in different places came up with very similar ideas and started building the same thing in parallel.

When I first commented on this in an article in March 2016, I assumed that in all the frenzied activity, the projects simply hadn’t heard of one another. This was true in part, but our subsequent research and analysis showed something more complex. In most cases, projects did hear about each other early on (so the self-organising mechanisms mentioned above were working well), and the reason there wasn’t more consolidation was mainly down to pragmatic difficulties – from the technical challenge of merging two databases to personality clashes. Pooling efforts and resources turned out to be easier said than done.

One category of projects where we saw this play out was with refugee job-matching platforms. This is a case where consolidation was particularly important because it’s a model that relies on generating a critical mass of users – if there’s too much fragmentation, the danger is that no single platform reaches this threshold and they all fail. Given that eleven such platforms were launched, things didn’t look good.

However, as far as we can make out, there seems to be one – jobs4refugees.org – which has emerged as successful. A couple of the others have been rolled into jobs4refugees, but most have simply been discontinued.

Fail #2: Building things that weren’t used

Duplication was only part of the problem. A large number of the projects either struggled to get their idea to a stage where it was functionally viable, or never generated a significant user base.

There are various reasons for this, and depending on the project there will always be a degree of speculation when carrying out the post-mortem. Was too little attention paid to marketing and user experience, meaning that a potentially effective idea simply never reached the people it could have helped? Was the idea itself fundamentally misaligned with people’s needs, or was it a failure on the level of organisation or team?

Rather than looking for elusive generalisations, let’s look at a couple of examples, considering just one type of project. During peak arrivals in 2015, the situation on the ground was really chaotic. Thousands of NGOs were doing their best to receive, house and support all of the new arrivals, supported by an army of volunteers. The challenge was evolving week by week. It was a scramble. Hence, several DSI projects were trying to create an overview of what services were being offered to refugees by NGOs (i.e. mapping all social services, not just DSI). They each started to build their own database, many of them also plotting the services on a map. It appears that all of these projects have failed – albeit in different ways.

The team at metacollect soldiered on for over two years, before discontinuing in March this year. Their difficulties mostly had to do with being a team of volunteers working on the project in their free time. As such, they lacked a clear organisational structure, but moreover, they lacked the resources to execute what they set out to do.

However, the story of a similar initiative, clarat, suggests that resources weren’t the only obstacle. Despite being well funded and staffed, clarat seem to have eventually concluded that mapping a sector as large and dynamic as this one remained an elusive goal.

This fact was compounded, in clarat’s case, by the sense that their imagined use-case didn’t seem to hold up in practice. To put it more bluntly: not many people were using it. Why this was the case, and why it took so long to realise, are central the next blog in this series, in which we examine why refugees and newcomers themselves were not more actively involved in building these DSI projects.

This article first appeared on DigitalSocial.Eu – betterplace lab is part of the migration and integration cluster at DSI4EU,a program supported by the European Union and funded under the Horizon 2020 Programme, grant agreement no 780473.

]]>Circular Economy: “The Most Radical Idea We Can Afford”https://www.betterplace-lab.org/de/circular-economy-the-most-radical-idea-we-can-afford-2/
Thu, 05 Jul 2018 13:26:57 +0000http://www.betterplace-lab.org/?p=3516Read on, my dear]]>We know that our planet does not provide enough resources to allow us to live and consume in the way we are doing today. It’s easy to surrender in the face of this seemingly inevitable doom. Or you can take things into your own hands and try to change the system like Alice Grindhammer, who founded the circular economy hub CRCLR in Berlin-Neukölln.

Upon entering CRCLR you immediately get the vibe of a spectacular place full of possibilities. The 2,000-square-meter former brewery building, with its raw walls, pipes running along the ceiling, and large windows, epitomizes the now fashionable Berlin aesthetic. Two upcycled hexagonal greenhouses serve as meeting rooms, and in the distance stands a huge transparent inflatable bubble, reminiscent of an Olafur Eliasson installation, which hosts group events. The bubble is beautiful, but more importantly, it can be heated, unlike the rest of the hall. That’s why, during the winter months, most people in CRCLR run around in their anoraks.

Alice Grindhammer herself doesn’t do the wasted vintage look. Instead, the 34-year-old co-founder of CRCLR sports an androgynous casual style and radiates joy and enthusiasm. While an earlier generation of environmentalists focused on inevitable doom, Alice belongs to a new generation motivated by the potential of positive change. “I always believed in business as a force for good. That’s why I studied finance. I really wanted to understand how we can create an economy which serves nature and humans.”

CRCLR is partly funded by rental income from events…

….or from co-working spaces in the building.

On my first visit, the CRCLR building was packed with a young audience attending the Open Source Circular Economy Days, a gathering devoted to sustainability know-how. Today, the space still contains the remnants of a feminist film festival. The rent from these events constitutes one revenue stream with which Alice and her co-founder Simon Lee pay their team. Other funds come from the initiatives which sit in the cordoned-off (and heatable) co-working area, as well as from consulting jobs. Just a few weeks ago, Alice won a public tender from the district of Neukölln to advise the local gastronomy sector on circular waste management.

„I really wanted to understand how we can create an economy which serves nature and humans.“

Alice Grindhammer

But the vision of CRCLR is much grander. Over the next years, the ground floor will be converted into a large co-working area, while the basement will host workshops and production spaces. Fifty tenants will be accommodated on the first floor. The whole construction process will be a real-life experiment in circular building. “The construction sector is responsible for over 60 percent of waste in Germany, most of which is not recycled,” says Alice. The circular model, in contrast, ensures that materials are managed in closed loops. Products are designed and built so that they can be reused or repurposed after consumption.

The furniture at CRCLR is made from reused or recycled materials.

“Everything we learn along the way is shared. The circular processes we implement can be the basis for many new companies.” For all her enthusiasm and visionary power, Alice sees herself above all as a „pragmatic revolutionary.“ Upon moving into the building, which was filled to the roof with rubble, the team wanted to recycle everything. But they learned very quickly that this would take forever. Now, they implement “the most radical idea we can afford,” says Alice. “When we needed desks, we could have researched for months to find the most sustainable solution. Instead, we gave ourselves a few hours, bought the materials, and constructed the desks the next day.”

Circular Economy

Our current economic model works mainly along the lines of make, use and dispose. In constrast to this, the idea of a circular economy is a systemic shift towards regenerative and restorative production processes. On July 5, we are inviting participants to our event Denkraum in Munich to discuss the opportunities of the circular economy model in Germany.

Alice’s can-do attitude already served her well in her first job as a trainee with a large German waste management company. “My mom thought it was hilarious that I wanted to work with waste. On my birthday she hid my presents in different trashcans around the house,” Alice remembers with a laugh. During the four-and-a-half years of her employment, she traveled extensively. In Jordan, she came across a huge toxic dump, filled with pharmaceutical waste from companies producing for the European market. In Afghanistan, she was responsible for the treatment of hazardous waste left over from the occupation. “I saw how waste was affecting the most vulnerable populations in the most vulnerable countries.”

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But she also felt a new momentum. In Kabul, Alice advised the government about transitioning to a green economy. She felt the timing was right to start her own enterprise. Most waste companies just cleaned up after others instead of providing holistic solutions regarding the whole production and waste cycle. “Working in the corporate world was a bit like doing karate, constantly looking for strategic openings and leverage points. There came a point when I realized I didn’t want to fight against something but rather collaborate with someone.”

„While most people thought there were no real business models for circular processes, I wanted to prove that they can be profitable.“

Alice Grindhammer

While exploring the Berlin social innovation scene in 2014, Alice came across the idea to start a hub for circular economy principles. “While most people thought there were no real business models for circular processes, I wanted to prove that they can be profitable.” Together with an early collaborator, she found the large brewery building in Neukölln. Even though their funds were limited, the owner seemed to be willing to sell. But at the last minute a real estate speculator outbid them. Alice was told she had five days to come up with an extra million euro.

What seemed to be a hopeless task was miraculously successful. The next day, Alice was introduced to Christoph Langscheid, CEO of the Swiss-based Edith Maryon Foundation. Grounded in the anthroposophical tradition, the foundation’s mission is to remove real estate from the investment bubble, making it available for long-term usage and socially compatible purposes instead. After one meeting and without the conventional due dilligence, Langscheid offered to buy the building, granting CRCLR a special lease for 99 years.

The CRCLR house is a constant work in progress…

…incorporating sustainable practices wherever possible.

Since that day, Alice and her team have been busy finetuning their concept. So far, it’s been a journey full of iterations. “In the beginning, all we wanted was to create a value-driven sustainability business. But with time we developed a much more systemic approach.” Today they see themselves as eco-system builders, providing a hub for circular economy practices. As part of this mission, they advise not only young sustainability initiatives but also traditional corporates and municipalities who want to transform their value chains.

In a similar vein, Alice insists on combining outer systems change with inner personal development. Early on, she realized that they had to foster a shift in mindsets. Collaborators need to have a certain level of awareness and specific values to make systemic change happen.

Alice is masterful at engaging highly diverse people, connecting easily and readily asking them for feedback and help.

“We are no hippie circle. People must be able to take multiple perspectives and to talk to the CEO of a large company just as well as to journalists and our Turkish neighbors,” says Alice. She herself is masterful at engaging highly diverse people, connecting easily and readily asking them for feedback and help. She stresses the importance of “mistake culture”: “We need people who do what is needed today, while searching how things can be done differently and better in the future.”

In order to increase the self-awareness and communication skills of her team members but also to create a culture of inner wellbeing, Alice has invited meditation and yoga teachers, coaches, and mentors into the project. Early results are promising, with raised levels of commitment and more aligned work practices.

These assets will be crucial for the next steps of the company. The real construction phase of the building will start in 2019. Alice is well aware that the road ahead is steep. But equipped with a strong sense of purpose and surrounded with supporters who share her values, CRCLR is on its way to fulfilling its mission of creating “a better way to work and live together.”

All pictures by Marc Beckmann/Ostkreuz

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TwentyThirty is an online magazine presented by the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt. It sheds light on the social, political, and environmental challenges we face and features inspiring Responsible Leaders who are working to solve them. Follow their work on Facebook.

Baratang Miya is the founder of Girlhype, an initiative based in Cape Town, South Africa, that empowers women to code. Through this initiative, many girls get the chance to come into contact with coding.

What made you start Girlhype?

Baratang Miya: I started Girlhype in 2003 just after graduating from university. It had always been clear to me that I wanted to go back to my community and change something. Going to school in a township, I had received the worst education in South Africa – what we call Bantu education. Being at university made me notice so many gaps. First, I found that blacks were outnumbered by whites, but blacks were the only ones doing the extra classes.

Why was that?

Baratang Miya: Up to that point, I had never touched a computer before. Then I found out that the computers were using a different English than the one I was familiar with. So I invested the time to do an extra class to educate myself. But that is not even where the frustration came from. The frustration sets in when you realize that you had received an inferior education and have to work double the amount to keep up with others who had a good education. And being a girl just triples the effort.

Can you explain?

Baratang Miya: Women are disadvantaged from every angle in society, and in technology. Digital advertising and social media perpetuate these disadvantages. They tell you that a woman must look and act in a certain way. The media shape the way you think and how you do research – when you type in the word “researcher” into Google, what comes up is all male. This is not new, it’s been this way for long. These stereotypes don’t lie in technology itself, but they get repeated by it. I found that we must turn this negative point into a positive one by using technology as a means of reshaping our thinking.

How?

Baratang Miya: In a world where I could not see women, I decided to be the change I wanted to see. In 2003, I started teaching women and girls digital literacy and how to code. I also decided that running an NPO empowering women and girls in STEM is not enough. I started appearing in public, speaking out at conferences and in government spaces including the UN for the rights of women and girls, talking about diversity, inclusion, and gender equality, which is a must.

Baratang Miya is the founder of Girlhype. all photos by Claudia Leisinger

Girlhype works out of the co-working space Rise Cape Town. Photo by Claudia Leisinger

Girls and young women learn to write code. Photo by Claudia Leisinger

View with a mountain. Photo by Claudia Leisinger

Girlhype is based in the Woodstock neighborhood of Cape Town. Photo by Claudia Leisinger

So rather than focusing on the negative effects of technology, you decided to address its positive potential. How did you turn that motivation into action to empower girls and young women?

Baratang Miya: I would say a very important catalyzer to turning things into action is a strong sense of self. I see myself as a feminist, and I just knew I wanted to give that kind of self-understanding back to society. But I didn’t have a concrete idea yet. At the same time, I spent a lot of time in a computer shop getting better at using PowerPoint and other programs students use to accomplish their coursework. One thing came to another: I met a guy who showed me that I could do more than just use a program, he showed me that I could actually write it. That was a turning point: I knew I wanted to go and teach girls how to write code, to turn girls into creators of content and eventually give them a better sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy through it.

You have been doing so for 15 years now. Do you perceive yourself as a role model?

Baratang Miya: I don’t know. Sometimes I struggle with that, because I don’t do what I do to win an award. Every time people say I am a role model, I tell them that the girls are the real heroes. They go through a lot to participate in class: some have a long journey to get to class, others put in so many extra hours to keep their families happy with the housework and then attend class after they’re done with their chores. These girls are resilient, strong-minded, and strong-hearted. I am inspired by their eagerness to learn – that’s where I find the motivation that keeps me going.

„The ultimate key is transforming culture to the point where it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman.“, Baratang Miya, Photo by Claudia Leisinger

What do you think needs to change in terms of providing better conditions for gender equality? What does a perfect world in 2030 look like for you?

Baratang Miya: The ultimate key is transforming culture to the point where it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman. We need a culture that allows you to strive no matter what. To get there, I think we need to set ourselves up for realistic goals. First, give resources to the people working on the ground. I always find that mentorship for girls and women is important. Second, get governments to commit to making sure that companies create a women-empowering culture and safe spaces for women to be in. Don’t just talk about it, make these efforts visible and traceable. And last but not least, don’t let men who are afraid of an empowered woman be the ones deciding on these things. In 2030, I wish for true equality, which means that a woman is no longer “only” seen as a woman, but as a person, simply a human being.

What’s it really like to be a woman in a software team, is a constant question I get from most women? More than the joy of cracking a problem. Read more here.

About Girlhype

Girlhype offers girls and young women an opportunity to develop technical competencies and social skills needed for full involvement in the new 21st-century job market and at the tertiary level.
The goal is to address the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that prepare youth for full participation. The work of founder Baratang Miya provides a strong link to SDG 5 (Gender Equality). Baratang herself serves as a key figure in bringing across the message of women’s empowerment in the digital field.

Topics

TwentyThirty is an online magazine presented by the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt. It sheds light on the social, political, and environmental challenges we face and features inspiring Responsible Leaders who are working to solve them. Follow their work on Facebook.